Character Creation: Cypher System

Sure, let's do a character for something fun and easy, since it's not like "fun and easy" have any other place to live in 2020. 

The Game: Cypher System
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I ran The Strange for a while before tragedy cut that game short, and I'm going to start running Predation soon
Books Required: Just the one, but, well, it's weird.

So, Cypher System is a setting-less system. Like GURPS, you don't just make a "Cypher" character, you need a setting to base it in. Unlike a lot of such games, the Cypher core doesn't have sample settings, but what it does have is a multi-page example of play. It's not a hugely detailed bit of world-building, but it's enough, I think - it's sci-fi opera, alien races, mind control spiders, that kind of thing. 

Actually, the example of play deals with a race called the Muggariks. We know they're tall and thin, they're claustrophobic and don't like locked doors. I'll make the Muggarik dude the PCs in the example rescue from the mind-spider, as though I was joining the game late because my pool game ran long at the jazz club. 

First thing is to choose a type. Since the group as it stands doesn't have a speaker, I shall say that Owani, my Muggarik, is a speaker. As a first-tier speaker, I get 8 Might, 9 Speed, and 11 Intellect, and then 6 additional points. I'll put 4 into Speed and the other 2 into Intellect (Muggariks are quick, but not necessarily beefy). My Effort is 1, my Intellect Edge is 1, and I can carry 2 cyphers at a time. I'm practiced with light weapons. I get four abilities as a speaker. I'll take Interaction Skills (trained in persuading and seeing through deception), Erase Memory, Understanding, and Encouragement. 

I don't think I wish to muck about with flavor, so I'll move on to Descriptor. Is there a "recently mind-spidered" one? No, but Mad hits some of the same notes. Why not? I get +4 to Intellect, and I get sudden bursts of insight whenever the GM feels like it. I also behave erratically (which can fuck me out of XP, which is too bad). I'm trained in a knowledge skill, which I'll called "Alien Fauna" (the thinking here is that it's kind of like Tania Saulnier's role in Slither; he's made contact with a mind-controlling race and now has some limited ability to access what that race knows). I also get an inability in resisting mental attacks. Ah, well. 

Focus! There's a handy list of foci appropriate to sci-fi, so let's see what Owani would be good for. I hate to fall into the "aliens are geniuses" cliche, but what the hell. I'll go with Calculates the Incalculable. I get Predictive Equation (if I study a thing, I get a difficulty reduction for rolls involving it) and I'm trained in math. Neat.

That's pretty much it, actually. We'll say that Owani was pretty much a normal Muggarik crew member until he was possessed by the mind-spider. Most of the time, if you kill the mind-spider or remove it, the host just kind of goes blank and then wakes up with no memory of what happened, but Owani somehow retained a connection to the horrible thing. It gives him knowledge and perspective he wouldn't normally have (including an instinctive understanding of mathematical models and predictions), but it also means he's not quite as stable as he was. If I were playing Owani long-term, I think his descriptor would change at some point as he either embraces or rejects the influence of the mind-spiders. 

That'll do it!